🌿Sapling 🙂Agree 🟢Conviction 🥾SpiritualPractices-EmbodiedLiving
The Big Idea
Reading Scripture devotionally can be thought of as having a conversation between God’s word and our personal reaction to what God is saying.
Related Note: Activity-A Conversion with Scripture Christian Meditation
Familiarity and Conversation with Scripture
Note
This level 1 heading used as LCOS 📃Epistle in series Mediation on Scripture, August 2025.
In last month’s epistle we discussed how Reading Scripture for Familiarity can be an important reorientation from always approaching Scripture as an object to be studied. This is important because when we study an object, it tends to stay at arm’s length. Scientists keep their specimens in tanks and dishes to avoid direct contact. When thinking of Scripture, we can see this same trend in biblical scholarship. There are prominent scholars who are Agnostic, and even Atheist who view the Bible like any other ancient text. They study and research and hypothesize and argue for the sake of science and history, not for any kind of personal faith. These individuals may know, and even understand, more than you or me about specific aspects of Scripture, but they have very clearly kept this knowledge apart from their everyday life.
Reading Scripture for familiarity is the first step in avoiding this kind of separation from God’s word. We first need to know what it says before we can ever start to understand it further. This, however, is not the only way we should interact with Scripture, it is a jumping off point. The riches of Scripture are truly inexhaustible, familiarity helps us see the broad coherence and beauty between so many books and stories contained within its pages.
A complementary perspective from which to read Scripture is as a conversation between God and myself.
A Conversation with Scripture
Many of us have always wanted to hear from God directly. Especially during challenging seasons of life, it would be amazing to have the heavens open and God tell us what to do, or how to think, or just give us an answer to something.
While that will probably never happen, God does talk to us every day if we allow Him. Scripture is right in front of us, yet it is tempting to look for His voice in other places. Yet His voice is not in the boom of thunder. Or a mysterious voice inside or outside us. It is through His clear revealed word that He invites us into a conversation. The Bible is not just words on a page, but God speaking to you. How will you respond? How have you responded already?
This perspective can be summed up like this:
Dr. Timothy Saleska
As you read Scripture, Scripture is reading you. Read the text, and as you read it, read yourself. Practice your self-awareness.
When we allow ourselves to have a conversation with God’s word, it becomes impossible to keep it “over there” away from affecting us. There is a connection, a natural back and forth. As I read, I may be surprised, comforted, uncomfortable, confused, you name it. All of these internal movements are my side of this conversation with God. These words mean something. As we seek to understand what the Author intended, God speaks and I respond. Each side of the conversation is important. What is happening in the text as well as what is happening inside ourselves creates a conversational back and forth with God. A very simple back and forth could go like this:
- What is the author saying and why?
- Am I agreeing, questioning, empathizing, pushing back, getting bored, praising God, making certain connections, confused, filled with joy and so on?
Let’s try this right now. Read Psalm 56:8:
Quote
You have kept count of my tossings; put my tears in your bottle. Are they not in your book?
Depending on where your life is right now, this verse may spark many different conversations with God. Whether this verse challenges or brings you peace, God is speaking to you. Speaking with God will always leave us different than when we started. What a precious invitation we have to come and have a conversation with our Creator and Redeemer.
An Exercise in Conversation
A worksheet for trying out this form of reading Scripture: Activity-A Conversion with Scripture
Conversation Enabling Questions
General Questions with which to approach the text
- What symbols/metaphors are present in the text?
- Does the text speak to me personally or do I feel distant from its voice?
- What do I resonate with and why?
- What action does the voice in the text suggest I take? Or maybe that’s a question that confuses me.
- What do I notice in the text that interests me? What questions does the text raise for me? How am I interpreting the voice(s) in the text? What notes would be helpful for future teaching of this text?
Questions for Devotional reading of Scripture
- What do you notice in the text?
- What do you value in the text?
- What questions does this text raise?
- So what? Why does this text matter?
- According to the speaker, where is God?
- How is this text true for me? Or not true?
- Read yourself as you read the text. What are you doing as you read?
- What does this text assume about the way the world is? What vision of the future has animated the author?
- How does this text fit into the larger story of Scripture?
- What does this text make possible? What can people do or imagine that they could not before?
- What does this text make impossible or at least very difficult?
- What would it be like if I lived my life like this?
Meditation on the Psalms (From Dr. Saleska)
Read the psalm, and as you read the psalm, read yourself. Practice your self-awareness. These are conversation enabling questions between you and the text.
- According to the speaker, where is God?
- How does the speaker describe God?
- How does the psalm hook up to the larger story of the Scriptures?
- How are the words of the voices in the psalms true for me? (Or do they not ring true? Why or why not?)
- Is it easy for you to identify with the speaker or difficult?
- What are some things you notice in the psalms?
- What are some things that you value about what the speaker is saying?
- When confronted with the words of the speaker, what should I do? Should I do anything?
- What you are doing as you read?
- Am I agreeing, questioning, empathizing, pushing back, getting bored, praising God, making certain connections, confused, filled with joy and so on?
- What does this psalm assume about the way the world is?
- What are the key features of the world that this psalm tries to deal with, respond to, make sense of?
- What vision of the future animates the speaker? What new sense does the psalm seek to add to the world that often seems chaotic and senseless?
- What assumptions does the speaker make about God? Are his beliefs surprising to you or old hat?
- How does this psalm challenge your imagination or fire it up?
- What can people do or imagine, thanks to this psalm, that they could not before?
- Conversely, what does this psalm make impossible, or at least very difficult?
- What activities and experiences that were previously part of the human experience become all but impossible in the wake of this new thing?